When Woodward Inc. was searching for a place to build its new manufacturing plant, one of the people courting the firm was Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who made at least a couple of trips to Loves Park to talk to Woodward leaders.

But the governor had better not try to come here and steal our companies now ... because we’ve got ourselves an Army tank. Yes, sir. So, stay on your side of the Cheddar Curtain, cheesehead in chief. Or else.

Yes, yes, Rockford’s police force got itself a surplus Army tank, one that fortunately was not snatched by ISIS extremists who are taking over Iraq — with our stuff.

Hey, say the cops, the tank is free! No assembly required, batteries included. It gets a whopping 5 mpg! With a new, sinister-looking jet black paint job, this vehicle looks as if it popped out of a video game or a Batman movie. (Painting “RESCUE” on the side doesn’t fool anyone, guys.)

Actually, the vehicle is not technically a “tank” because those have steel tracks, and this thing has big tires.

This 40-ton, six-wheeled behemoth, which is 10 feet tall and too big to fit in the Public Safety Building garage, is a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle! It features a machine-gun turret and can transport 12 people — when the taxpayers put seats in it.

And it was designed to fight foreign wars, not police American streets.

Where do you get parts? How do you maintain it? Who can repair it? Silly you, don’t worry about such trifling details.

It is supposed to look intimidating to crooks. But it also looks intimidating to the general public, particularly the public in minority neighborhoods where it’s likely to be used.

So, one might be tempted to ask, “What were they thinking?” when they took this war machine off the Army’s hands, or, “Were they thinking at all?”

According to the news story written by Chris Green, police appear to have searched long and hard to find a good reason to own a war-fighting machine. One officer cited a 1997 Los Angeles bank robbery in which a cop nearly bled to death. Another talked about the breakdown of a cheaper, less-awesome police Humvee in the run-up to a raid on the Hells Angels in 2013 as an occasion on which a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle might have been helpful to the cops.

One said it has a “wow” factor. Another cop said that if an armed person barricades himself inside a house, “we can drive this right up to someone’s front door.” Just like at Waco, officer?

Page 2 of 2 - This war machine is one more, sad example of the intimidating and dangerous militarization of America’s police agencies. Journalist Radley Balko, author of “Rise of the Warrior Cop,” warned about it in a 2013 Wall Street Journal column:

“Since the 1960s, in response to a range of perceived threats, law-enforcement agencies across the U.S., at every level of government, have been blurring the line between police officer and soldier. Driven by martial rhetoric and the availability of military-style equipment — from bayonets and M-16 rifles to armored personnel carriers — American police forces have often adopted a mind-set previously reserved for the battlefield. The war on drugs and, more recently, post-9/11 antiterrorism efforts have created a new figure on the U.S. scene: the warrior cop — armed to the teeth, ready to deal harshly with targeted wrongdoers, and a growing threat to familiar American liberties.”

The Rockford Police Department should repaint its killing machine in desert camouflage and donate it to a VFW post, which could display it in front of its clubhouse. That’s the honorable thing to do with it — salute the men and women who put their lives on the line in a real, shooting-and-bombing war.

We don’t need police officers playing Army in Rockford, Illinois. Just be good cops, not road warriors.